I have always referred to god as the ultimate Santa Claus. God is the exact same thing for grown ups, except this gift is life after death at a cost of zero-- why adults like this story so much.
And, yes, we can all prove that Santa absolutely does not exist easily.
If he were, reindeer can fly, some are born with Xmas lghts for noses
(and how would a red one provide any real light in a snowstorm?),
elves (short ones) exist, and fat humans can live in a climate
unfit for most locals in an unseen castle with an unseen factory
that makes no noise, no pollution and can even build PS3s
even when Sony says, “we’re out.”
The thing I don’t understand about the class of movies where a child adamantly (and correctly) believes in Santa Claus, even while the adults around all doubt, is what exactly is Santa Claus doing, given that these skeptical adults are presumably buying presents for their children on their own, and not noticing any surprising extras?
And, Lobsang, I agree with most of your OP that god (or groups of gods)
are indeed created by people.
Agnosticism, however, IMO is the religious equivalent
to “no contest.” Like, “Not sure, but just in case it’s true,
I can always argue that I never blasphemed, so worse comes
to worse, I’ll beg St. Pete.” Or even (not meant to offend)
“not guilty by reason of insanity or exigent circumstances.”
I truly believe agnostics to be the true middle ground.
If you claim to be agnostic, you investigated… partially.
Why not go further?
For me, atheism was NEVER a possible train of thought for me
until life and its events gave me reasons to
investigate. I can’t expect everyone to follow what I thought
were obvious clues to the same atheistic path.
After all, we are all individuals.
“Yes, we are all individuals.”. - LOB
What REALLY irks me about agnostics is the same fear
believers have… what if it really is true?
Again, it’s fear of knowledge, a requirement
for all theists.
In a short fantasy/sci-fi story I read, it was hinted that his magic implanted false memories in the parents’ heads of buying their kids the gifts he left.
When presented with an hypothesis I can believe it, disbelieve it or withhold judgment. Whether I withhold judgment depends upon the quality of the existing evidence, the costs of waiting and the aversion to plonking for an incorrect choice. In this context, it’s the last element which is most relevant.
Similarly, my degree of skepticism and demand for hard evidence varies depending whether I am in a courtroom or in a tavern.
True. I might be considered an optimistic epistemologist. I agree that none of the examples that I use prove there is a god. At the very best, they might suggest a tiny, open Planck-length sized door of a possibility of something causing what appears to be an unexplainable miracle or statistical anomaly or verification of very large numbers of anecdotal experiences. Ruling something out over time is also a part of knowledge, and lending more credence to a null hypothesis by way of continuing NOT to find evidence helps make the case.
I use the word agnostic in more of the sense of not having knowledge of something. And realizing that there may be some things which might remain beyond the reach of science. That’s hard to say; perhaps after many millennia our descendants may know everything there is to know, but that’s unlikely. As long as rational sentients exist it’s likely there will be more questions and perhaps the testing will get exponentially harder. Perhaps there is a better word than agnosticism, but as much as I believe we can learn ever more through math and sciences, hard and soft, likely it will only remain a foundation with some questions never answered. I’m not sure that atheism describes one who doesn’t believe but is willing to see evidence that demonstrates otherwise. I am an atheist except that I have no problem with people who want to prove some sort of divinity using the scientific method, if they will ever be able to. And until some of the apparent weirdness of quantum physics, string theory and the like are ironed out, IMO, the fat lady hasn’t sung. Many atheists are not willing it seems to consider this, which strikes me as not applying the scientific method to its fullest.
I also think that looking for Gods alone ignores a slightly more likely subset of something that could appear godlike to us but wouldn’t be considered an actual eternal, all knowing, omnipotent pantheistic deity. Or one that exists separate from our universe. And again, if the supernatural is supposed to be something that effects us outside of the laws of nature, how will we re-define that word if we uncover proof of a multiverse or other versions of us living in other timelines? Particularly if our universe is in some way effected or bound to such other instances of existence? Again, that all firmly sits at this time in the null hypothesis category. But they are questions raised by current empirical evidence.
You make the common mistake of thinking that every Santaist is a fundamentalist Santaist, who believes in the inerrancy of Rudolph. Sure that song is a recent one, but clearly the writer was inspired by the true Santa. You aSantaists need to understand that we moderate Santaists can accept Santa while agreeing that nothing written about him is accurate.
Actually, this is the standard position for the vast majority of atheists. If evidence appeared in favor of the god-hypothesis that was worth the tissue paper it was printed on, atheists would sit up and take note, and draw conclusions as was meritied by the type and quality of the evidence. Yes, some people would point out that it could be aliens messing with us, but if an actual god existed and wanted more followers, whole reams of atheists could be scooped up if the god just showed up, demonstrated its power, explained its prior lack of intervention, and basically just made sense as a credible and believable diety.
Of course, until this actually happens, they don’t believe, making them atheists in the meantime.
No; the scientific method does not require you to refrain from accepting theories prior to all the evidence coming in - it just requires you to be prepared to alter or abandon those theories in favor of better ones when sufficient contrary evidence does emerge in favor of the now-better theory. If the scientific method required us to sit on our hands until the last of the unknowns had been purged, then nothing would ever have come out of science.
The goal of science is to give us the best information about the world given present levels of knowledge. This enables us to draw informed conclusions and act with imperfect knowledge. It has, on average, worked fairly well.
Thus, we need not wait for complete and total knowledge of all things in the universe before deciding that we’re quite sure Thor isn’t real, and so it’s safe to take the risk of not building a shrine to him out of his Marvel comics if we don’t feel inclined to do so.
Oh, and Der Trihs? I already noted that a meat-machine afterlife is “impossible if you require continuity of existence for it to count”. I think that answers all your protests, and still leaves an open possibilty for meat-machine afterlives if you do not require continuity of existence.
In other news, Star Wars might be a documentary about an alternate dimension, piped into Lucas’s subconscious via interstellar mind radio from B’omarr monks.
If you want to use the technical language (dated from the early 1990s, apparently), the phrase is weak atheist, but in common speech that’s a somewhat misleading characterization. For a more helpful taxonomy see the spectrum of theistic probability.
At any rate, I’ll put my agnosticism up against anyone’s atheism. Again, I ask: What is your model of consciousness? How do you distinguish conscious from non-conscious entities? In most cases of course, we don’t have to: we only have to interact with other humans. Animals can simply be dominated in one way or another. But until a plausible model of consciousness can is put forward, talk of entities like God is much like the discussion of tuberculosis before the advent of the germ theory of disease.
See my earlier post for the mathematical/ontological argument.
You’ve never seen a dog who has trained his “owner” then, have you?
We don’t need a precise model of consciousness to know that it is directly tied to a physical information processing unit. Reason enough not to believe in any immaterial conscious entities.
Maybe it’s an assumption that God knows more about physics than mankind currently does and rather than bend of defy the laws uses them in a way we don’t comprehend.
Interesting. Under a strict definition I suppose I might be an agnostic. I’m not completely sure it can’t be known but I acknowledge there is no objective evidence and the subjective experience is not conclusive. I hadn’t considered myself an agnostic before.
I’m expounding on the meaning of a- in atheism. It doesn’t mean “against” theism, it means “without”. Atheism isn’t a process of denial, it’s simply an issue of not believing in something for which there is no evidence.
okay. I understood it as an absence of belief. I think the evidence issue is not connected to the strict definition which is why that previous post threw me. Someone could be an atheist, theist, or agnostic, without even considering or looking at the evidence. I think that makes your post a bit inaccurate.
True to some extent, but I think that when someone admits that there isn’t any evidence for something and that any other thing you could make up be it the tooth fairy, reincarnation, or surviving a dip on the surface of the sun as being equally plausible given the complete lack of reason to believe in any of those, that can safely be said to be being an atheist.
I don’t agree at all. People believe for various reasons. Some of those reasons are very real personal subjective experiences. That’s not objective evidence and those experiences have other possible explanations but it’s not the same as anything you could make up. I don’t think you could safely call that person an atheist.
